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Gary Gygax, 1938-2008: Rest in Peace, Dungeon Master

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From the creator of, among other things, the "order of the stick" webcomic.

3/4/2008 I never got the chance to actually meet Gary Gygax. Despite both of us being in the same convention center several Augusts in a row, I never managed to figure out where he would be and how I could get myself in front of him so that I could tell him how much his creation has meant to me and my life. I'm sure he got that all the time, actually, but it wouldn't have deterred me.
Knowing that I won't ever get that chance now is hard. For those of you who have not heard, Mr. Gygax died today. I've decided that since I have a character hanging around in the afterlife anyway, I would let him say the things that I no longer have the opportunity to express (at least not on this side of -10 hit points).
I don't know if he even knew The Order of the Stick existed, much less how he felt about it if he did. But it doesn't matter if he thought it was derivative slop, ultimately, because when you help create something as big as D&D, you're changing the world in a billion tiny ways that are out of your control?including inspiring a graphic designer to start drawing a bunch of silly stick figures on ridiculous adventures. For all my mocking of the current rules (a point on which I strongly suspect Mr. Gygax had many things to say), OOTS is still a loving tribute to a game that hasn't just changed my life, personally, but has given us all a new way to tell stories going forward into the new century.
Wherever he is, I hope he rolls good stats on his next incarnation.
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From Yahoo news

MILWAUKEE - Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.

He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.
Gygax and Dave Arneson developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys, and eventually was turned into video games, books and movies.
Gygax always enjoyed hearing from the game's legion of devoted fans, many of whom would stop by the family's home in Lake Geneva, about 55 miles southwest of Milwaukee, his wife said. Despite his declining health, he hosted weekly games of Dungeons & Dragons as recently as January, she said.
"It really meant a lot to him to hear from people from over the years about how he helped them become a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, what he gave them," Gail Gygax said. "He really enjoyed that."
Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules. The quintessential geek pastime, it spawned a wealth of copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that's still growing in popularity.
Born Ernest Gary Gygax, he grew up in Chicago and moved to Lake Geneva at the age of 8. Gygax's father, a Swiss immigrant who played violin in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, read fantasy books to his only son and hooked him on the genre, Gail Gygax said.
Gygax dropped out of high school but took anthropology classes at the University of Chicago for a while, she said. He was working as an insurance underwriter in the 1960s, when he began playing war-themed board games.
But Gygax wanted to create a game that involved more fantasy. To free up time to work on that, he left the insurance business and became a shoe repairman, she said.
Gygax also was a prolific writer and wrote dozens of fantasy books, including the Greyhawk series of adventure novels.
Gary Sandelin, 32, a Manhattan attorney, said his weekly Dungeons & Dragons game will be a bit sadder on Wednesday night because of Gygax's passing. The beauty of the game is that it's never quite the same, he said.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Besides his wife, Gygax is survived by six children.
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From 1up.com

Gary Gygax Dies at Age 69


The man who gave us D&D fails his final saving throw.
By Mark Whiting, 03/04/2008
media
Gary Gygax -- the godfather of the pen-and-paper RPG and the man largely responsible for giving the world a little something called Dungeons & Dragons -- is dead. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Gygax died at his home in Lake Geneva early on Tuesday morning after struggling with health problems for several years. He was 69 years old. For more than three decades Gary's name was absolutely synonymous with the core DNA of the modern RPG. Even the term "roleplaying game" as we understand it today is derived directly from the early designs of Gygax and friend Dave Arneson, who co-created the original D&D First Edition rulebook back in 1974.
For the last 30 years gamers have seen RPG-dom move from an underground cult phenomenon to a global hobby enjoyed by kids and adults alike. If you've ever built a character, rolled 'to-hit', gone to a game convention, or even just enjoyed the sensation of building a party and rampaging around somewhere killing monsters and scoring lewt in fantastic, imaginative settings, you owe Gary respect. His influence on the foundations of modern-day gaming is incalculable.
Newbie D&D fans just sitting down to absorb some 4th Edition (due to be officially released on June 6th, 2008) probably are not aware of how things were back in the late '70s and early '80s when Gygax and his company TSR ("Tactical Studies Rules") were trying hard to popularize a hobby which the public at large seemed intent on branding weird, scary, morally threatening to children and generally unhealthy for civilized society. Sound familiar?
Gygax's wife spoke to reporters at their home this morning, saying that even up until January (when his illness became too pronounced to continue) Gary enjoyed hosting weekly D&D sessions at his home. Over the years, it was one of his great pleasures to meet fans who told him that fooling around with characters, persona and dice ultimately helped them decide to becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, or whatever else. "He really enjoyed that."
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Gygax always struck me as a tremendously sinister name: no mortal name, this. This was the sort of name one earned in the service of horned devils and more primordial shapes of evil, a boon for the loyal servant, placed like a black crown on the bowed head.
The first time I ever played Dungeons & Dragons, I was six years old - books with great red demons on the cover that dared us to claim their riches, subtitled by this alien name Gygax. My mother was furious when she found my uncles had exposed me to those subterranean burrows, spilling over with rubies, and tourmalines, and the wealth of old kings even songs no longer remember. As a young man, I began hiding the books I bought inside my bed, which had a vast hollow space I had hidden in as a child. These books were soon discovered, and blamed for everything from recent colds to the dissolution of my parents' marriage. I took the wrong lesson, I'm afraid: I didn't learn to fear them. What I learned was that books, some books, were swollen with power - and this power projected into the physical realm. Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes.
I owe a tremendous debt to his legacy. I couldn't even calculate how deep.
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I play/played Neverwinter Nights too, great game. Also played Baldur's Gate. Didn't know this guy was the creator till now, but he definitly has been a large influence in the world of gaming. If you think about it, just about every RPG or MMO (Especially the early ones) were based on dice rolls. I know I read the early Nintendo games, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, were inspired by D&D. I never played tabletop D&D, but my roommates kept me up in college by playing it till all hours of the morning. I lived though.
 
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ulukinatme;1108390; said:
I play/played Neverwinter Nights too, great game. Also played Baldur's Gate. Didn't know this guy was the creator till now, but he definitly has been a large influence in the world of gaming. If you think about it, just about every RPG or MMO (Especially the early ones) were based on dice rolls. I know I read the early Nintendo games, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, were inspired by D&D. I never played tabletop D&D, but my roommates kept me up in college by playing it till all hours of the morning. I lived though.
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I know by your impeccable taste in video games, you'd enjoy DnD. I'm lucky enough to have multiple talented Dungeon Masters and the stories told here are as good as any.
 
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BuckeyeSoldier;1107535; said:
I control lots of these characters to this day... my favorite's name is bkb.. he is a sort of shape shifter... my other favorites might be those who took part in vanquishing the evil alan/diehard beast... not to mention horde after horde of trolls.
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Haar! Drink up, me hearties. Yo ho!
 
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